User blog:CJC95/2010 - A review
2010 has been a brilliant year for Brickipedia. We've gained fabulous new editors, thousands of new articles and new visitors. This blog will run through all the key points of the year and also look at the future. You can have a say in the comments below. Don't be scared. The wiki is formed and shaped by You. Get involved. The content This year, we rocketed past the 10,000 article mark. As much as i'd like to take all the credit, I can't. No. If I could find out every user who has ever made a good edit, I'd list them here, but we all know the list is too long. This year saw us branch away from just people editing their favourite themes. We have developed. We have had editors branch out and focus on DUPLO, TECHNIC, Dacta and early sets. We haven't finished all our set articles, but we are a lot closer now then we were this time last year, with only a few themes such as Dolls lacking any real push. We have also set out more guidelines and templates for other LEGO releases. Be it merchandise, play wear, clothes or books, we have now got categories and pages slowly starting to list them. The road for these is not as clear as normal sets, as their is so many, but we are getting a good foot in. We have also got some included nowhere else, such as Polish colouring books and LEGOLAND California Toothpick Holders. The articles themselves may not be the most popular, but they help show one thing. We are more than just a site which looks and Brickset and Bricklink and puts it in a template. We are a site capable of finding things and presenting them in our unique way. One example of this has been the development of navigation templates. What better way to find all TECHNIC sets of 1998 or all Ninjago minifigures then a nice, stylish template at the end of the article. This year we also implemented a new article system. The Featured Article criteria was completely revamped in 2009 and some members elected to join a reviewing group. This year we decided the name, which is quite clearly the most important part. The Imperial Guards. We could of voted for a lighter name, but they didn't like the idea of being called "Featured Fairies". The Featured Article criteria this year helped improve our out put of featured articles, giving certain users a more powerful vote than others. We currently have 17 featured articles We also introduced two other article ratings. Good articles and Complete articles. Good articles are articles which are high quality, but due to the topic of the article, are unlikely to make Featured status. Complete articles were set out to be levels at a good quality level that should, ideally, be the basis of all articles. This is especially useful for smaller sets which we cannot get as much information on, yet are complete to the best of their abilities. ;Featured articles this year * January - 7775 Aquabase Invasion * February - Pirates * March - Black Knights * April - Hogwarts * May - 6195 Neptune Discovery Lab / Aqua Dome 7 * June - 10210 Imperial Flagship * July - 6986 Mission Commander * August - Orient Expedition * September - 8098 Clone Turbo Tank * October - Boba Fett * November - 5988 Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins * December - BIONICLE The policy The Manual of Style has changed greatly this year. After a long vote, we decided that in most cases, we should use British English over its American counterpart. We also introduced a new template that allows minifigures to be displayed in a gallery on a set page, allowing people to see the minifigures included in a much clearer and easier way. Introduced this year was a part infobox, which is a stylish way to give the key details on a piece. With it came part guidelines and, since then, the guidelines for inventories, which we are hoping to really get going next year. This year we agreed a few Naming Conventions as well, also decided to use LEGO's official name for minifigures except where it may cause confusion. A key feature introduced this year was the achievement badges and the leaderboard. These have helped get more users and although some don't start out perfect, they end up as good editors. This year, we also trailed article comments and although the vote was close, we decided at this time not to remove them. One downside of these achievement badges however was the influx of users adding hundreds of pointless categories just to get the points. Because of this we introduced Category Guidelines, which limited the addition of automatic categories and created year sub-categories to allow easy access to all minifigures or themes from that year. Though these changes mainly just edited the foundations of the wiki policy created in 2009, it has helped make the wiki a easier to view and easier to access place. Some statistics ; Statistics from 2010 go from January - Dec 28. * This year we went from 5,532 articles to 14,049. That's an increase of 8517 articles. * In 2009, on average 7 users made 10 or more edits a month. This year's average is 20 users, which achievements have played a help in. * On average, 26 articles have been made everyday. In August the average was 53 a day! * In 2009, we had on 44,426 edits on articles. In 2010 we have had 175,950 edits on article pages! * 146,921 images were uploaded! The users You. You are a user. You are a editor. You are Brickipedia. Not literally of course. But users are the reason why Brickipedia can be better than others. That is why we cracked a landmark of 10,000 articles this year. That is why we are in the top 15 active wikia communities. You. Why do we have articles on a range of sets, and pages on years, and images of minifigures? You. Why have we started inventories, have navbar templates and have colours on the infoboxes? You. All of you have a say. All of you get to decide which articles are best, or which policy we should enact, or who should be our next admin. All of you can be patrollers. You are Brickipedia. This year we have had many stand out users, too many to actively list. First I shall offer congratulations to the following: ;Our Brickipedians of the Month of 2010 * January - * February - * March - * April - * May - * June - * July - * August - * September - * October - * November - * December - ;Given rights this year: * New Bureaucrat - * New Administrators - , , , and * New Rollbacks - , , , , , , , , Your contributions (and mine) Now, as many of you will know, I asked you to help me out here. And you delivered. Now, if you are not mentioned here don't be disheartened, just look at the end of the list :) For the full quotes and for the few not included fully, see here ; Everyone Yes, as I said, all editors who contribute to Brickipedia are worthy of an award. Also, I'd once again like to say to users that they should pop in to IRC. Myself, BobaFett2, Ajraddatz, Lcawte, Gladiatoring, Mackmoron11 and Samdo are often their, so come say hi. ;Agent Chase ;Agent Fuse ;Ajraddatz ;BobaFett2 ;Construction Worker ;GameGear360 ;Gladiatoring I'm going to add something here: Glad has worked astonishingly hard on sets released from the 60's to 80's, helping us greatly get them articles made and sorting out the tricky numbering of the early sets. ;Kingcjc ;Lcawte Lcawte may not appear to edit much, but his bot is always improving stuff and making the wiki better. ;LegOtaku LegOtaku has made brilliant templates, so complex that I can't decipher them. :LEGOCityManiac11 ;Legoguy2805 ;Mariofighter3 ;MillieMuddFan67 ;NerfBlasterPro ;Nighthawk leader I echo them two. The wiki would be a different place without Nighthawk, from his logos to his articles to his ideas, they have been invaluable and he was the one to turn to if you needed to advice. He is currently taking a break, but lets hope that he is back sometime soon. ;Samdo994 ;SKP4472 ;Snowhive Snowhive has done something you may not notice, but he has added interwiki links between here and its German counterpart, which although you may not use, are very important to the wiki. ;TheDarkKnights ;The Grand Editor ;Other users of note this year Cptain Rex, L-DI-EGO, Clone Commander Fox, NOBODY, Tatooine, Lego lord, Captain Jag, Mackmoron11 Now So where are we now? We are in a good position. That's because we have an advantage over the Bricksets, Lugnets and Bricklinks. Anyone can add them information and our format gives us room to do more then they can. We can easily add a gallery of images, or a description of a set. You can. The real advantage we have is not the format or the admins, its the average user. The average user who can create articles, can edit information and upload images. You have the power here. The real question is how to improve. Future So, what to do in 2011? Well, first we need to keep on the current path. Keep adding information on the known and the unknown, the old and the new. Keep up the hard work and we are half way their. Personally this year I think we need to work on our Part articles. These are relatively new and so not near a level of completion. So, what thoughts have been floating round on the future? I've had a few brainstorms and also discussed a few ideas with BobaFett2 and Glad. One thought that has come to my mind is that we need to spread our name more, perhaps by linking or affiliating with other LEGO sites. Ideas are, as ever floating around. Should we look at forums? Perhaps put more help into Lcawte's brickpost? Should we add reviews? or Should we bring back article comments? I'm sure you all have ideas too. Please list them below or create a forum topic. Your ideas are just as good, or may even be better than ours. Please get involved and have a Happy New Year. -------- Contributions by NOBODY, LEGOCityManiac11, Lego Lord, Tatooine, BobaFett2, Mariofighter3, GameGear360, Clone Commander Fox, SKP4472, Ajraddatz, MillieMudFann67, Samdo994 and Gladiatoring Special Thanks to Ajraddatz, BobaFett2 and Gladiatoring Category:Blog posts